Lost Time
by sss979
Summary: River barely knows the Doctor, although the Doctor knows her quite well. It makes a "first date" interesting. But when the Doctor discovers he's missing time - an unspecified chunk of memory stolen from him that night - he finds himself searching for the answers to questions he hadn't even realized were haunting him.
1. Prologue

**PROLOGUE**

**A/N: This is another one of those books, like Reunion, that I am posting in the hopes that encouraging reviews will help me to finish it... since it's been sitting on my hard drive unfinished forever. So please review. Special thanks to thagrrrl79 for her assistance in cowriting/exploring 11 and River. **

"Let me tell you a story."

Weak with hunger, eyes burning from the ash and dust that swirled over the surface of the devastated, desolate planet, the dark haired child smiled nonetheless as she lay her head on her thin, bony arm. "Is there a princess in it, grandmother?" she asked, her voice scratchy with prolonged thirst.

"No, there's not a princess. Not this time."

"A king, then?"

The woman settled her old, frail body against the rough, hard surface of the broken wall behind her. They were safe from the elements here - from the acid rain and the scorching wind. It was no home, but it was a place to sleep. The last place to sleep, the old woman thought, near the last meager supply of polluted, deadly water. But she couldn't tell that to the little girl. How could you tell a child - an innocent and good child - that death was coming for them?

"Is he a brave king with lots of loyal subjects?"

The woman chuckled softly and shook her head. "No, not a king. He was only a man."

"What sort of man? Was he handsome?"

"Perhaps he was handsome," the woman answered softly. "In a way. But make no mistake, his appearance was that of an ordinary man - tall and thin with light brown hair. He was somebody you wouldn't think twice about passing on a crowded street, an ordinary young man in an ordinary coat and a bow tie - nothing special. Nothing unusual."

The woman winced as she stretched her legs out in front of her, gingerly allowing the sores on the back of her calves to rest in the dust. Then she took a deep breath, forced a smile, and continued in her best storytelling voice.

"But appearances can be deceiving. For this man was much older than he appeared - over a thousand years old, in fact. And if you looked closely, if he let you study the green eyes of his ordinary face, you could see the stars there. You could feel the adventures he'd lived, across all the galaxies of the universe. And only then would you realize that this ordinary-looking man was in fact the bravest man who ever lived."

The little girl smiled and she leaned in a bit, not interrupting. Instead, she eagerly awaited the continuation of the story, brushing her pesky hair away from her eyes. Most of it was too matted to move. But what could seemed like it was always falling in her face.

"He was also a very good man. A man who helped people in need, who saved people who were hurt or in danger. A man with two hearts and no home. A man who was the last of his kind."

"Like me, grandmother?"

"Yes, I suppose so." The woman reached a bony, gnarled hand to brush the girl's hair back for her as it fell forward again.

"And was his planet broken like this one?"

"Yes."

"But he escaped, didn't he? Like we will, someday?"

"Oh, yes, he escaped," the old woman said, hiding her sadness behind a soft smile.

"How did he?"

"My dear child, that is a story for another time. The story I want to tell you now is a story of one particular adventure. An adventure he never meant to have, but one that would change his life forever."

"Is there a dragon in it?"

"Shh..."

The girl smiled, but quieted.

"You see, this man was a traveler. He traveled all over the universe in his special ship. But not only could he go any _place_ he wanted, but any _time _as well. His special ship was a time machine. And being very old and very clever, he knew of all the most exciting places and times in the universe - the places and times he wanted to see.

"Now, because he was a very _good _man, he helped people wherever he went. Sometimes, his special ship took him to planets he'd not meant to visit because someone needed help and had wished very hard. Sometimes it was purely by accident that he found himself surrounded by monsters or invading armies. And sometimes, it was for the sake of a friend. Once such time, he fought off an entire army to save his very best friend from the bad people, and what was more... He did it all without ever once firing a shot. Another time, he saved the planet Earth from an invasion of the evil Daleks."

The little girl's smile grew as she shivered dramatically, and the old woman smiled back.

"He could stop a war with the power of his mind. And once, he even saved a little boy from the scary monsters in his closet."

"What was his name, Grandmother?"

"His name... was the Doctor."


	2. The Good Doctor

**CHAPTER ONE**

**The Good Doctor**

"This man, the Doctor, had many friends. A good man makes a lot of friends in a thousand years of living. But one friend, in particular, was different from the rest. Her name was River Song.

"River Song was a peculiar sort of friend because when he knew her best, she knew him least. And when she knew him most, he hardly recognized her. You see, since the Doctor was a traveler in time as well as space, he didn't always live his life in a natural sequence. The first time the Doctor met River was the last day of her life. The first time River met the Doctor, he had known her for years. Quite by accident, and with a little help from River herself, he'd gone back in time, and met her before she knew him.

"He'd told her, then, that he would return, that they would surely meet again. He even hinted that one day, they would love each other very much. But then he disappeared from her life. And she didn't hear from him again for six whole years..."

*X*X*X*

The library was dark - at least this portion of it. In a room so large with a ceiling so high, row after row of books gathering dust on mahogany shelves, it was best to carry a torch if you intended to stand at the shelf and peruse your findings before dragging an armful of books back to the table. At the table, there were lights - personal lamps with shades that River always turned up to illuminate as much of the table as possible. When she came here - and that was almost every night - she undoubtedly ended up with pages and pages of maps and photocopied books, everything she ever wanted to know about the time period she was studying strewn across the table.

Most people in her field took an interest in one particular locality, one particular history of a particular people. But she had studied all of it - a hundred thousand worlds in a hundred thousand eras. The generalization would, perhaps, keep her out of the field. People wanted an expert with them on an archeological expedition - someone who knew all there was to know about the civilization they were attempting to uncover. But she wasn't doing this to land a good paying job in the field. She also wasn't doing it to be speculative on things that were and things that might have been, like the scholars and professors she had studied under. She was doing it because when the time came, as she knew it would, she wanted to know where, when, and how to find him.

Hefting her newest stack of books onto the table, she paused to rub the bridge of her nose, easing away the headache that was starting to form. This term paper would be the death of her yet. An overview of ancient Triskili history - particularly the war that resulted in the species' self-destruction, and fracture into sects. Besides the sheer number of resources to sift through, it wasn't really where her interests lie. There were so many things she would rather be working on. Her thesis, for instance, which was already well underway although she was only halfway through her Master of Arts. She had been gathering sources for years, and every time she found a new batch, reading through them was like opening presents on Christmas morning.

It had been six years since she'd seen him. Since she'd successfully killed him, then brought him back, and finally woke up in a hospital bed with the Doctor and his two friends. Her parents, she thought with a smirk. They'd left her on a planet called New Earth - a safer hospital for somebody with two hearts, the Doctor had said with a knowing smirk. And then they'd disappeared from her life. With nowhere to go and nothing particularly holding her in place except a driving urge to know whatever it was he knew about her, she had adopted the name River, and River Song had become a student of archaeology with a notable obsession for the legend known as the Doctor.

Plenty of records existed - stories and myths and accounts from all over the universe. She gathered them as she wrote her papers, delivered her presentations, made contacts with others in her field. And when she wasn't writing one of those papers or attending one of those conferences, she was reading over those stories and myths. She glanced, almost longingly, at the backpack that contained a dozen such documents that she'd not yet looked over. Christmas morning was so very near...

Just as soon as she finished this paper.

She sat down. She read and notated until her eyes hurt. One account of the Doctor said that he could read an entire book in a matter of seconds. If that was true, she envied him. Her mind could only take so much before she could hardly even comprehend what she was reading. With a deep sigh, she set her book aside, and stared at the backpack for a long moment. Maybe just a little peek under the wrapping paper.

She closed her laptop before she reached over and opened her bag, withdrawing the stack of loose papers and spreading them out in front of her. She'd been so excited to get her hands on these. Firsthand accounts, preserved from one of the planets on the outer rim of the Cistryn Nebulae. She smiled as she looked over them - her reward for a hard night's work. Maybe she should take them back to her apartment and sit down to read them with a glass of wine. Or maybe in a hot bath...

She left them scattered across the table as she stood, gathered her books, and carried them down one of the aisles to the cart for reshelving. She yawned - too much sitting in one place for too long - and turned back to gather the rest, pausing along the way as a title on the shelf caught her eye. Paleontology in the 22nd Century. She made a note of it just for the sake of curiosity - Earth history always did have a special place in her heart, for obvious reasons - then continued to the end of the aisle. There, she pulled up short, with a quick gasp at the realization that she wasn't alone.

"River Song." The man sitting in the chair she'd recently vacated looked quite settled in - as if he'd been there for several minutes at least. Leaning back with his feet up on the table, head lowered, he smiled in the dark. "How nice to see you again."

She recognized him the instant he looked up, and her jaw fell. Six years since she'd seen him. And he didn't look a day older. Of course, neither did she. That was to be expected. She'd even wondered, in her most recent regeneration, if she could turn her age back the other way - grow younger instead of older. But as it turned out, that was something that even Time Lords couldn't do. Shaking off her surprise and straightening her posture, she continued her walk to the table with as much calm and poise as she could manage.

"I was beginning to think I'd never see you again," she said, careful not to let her voice squeak. The topic of her scholarly obsession and her private wonderings for so long, and here he was right in front of her.

He smirked - a knowing smile that served as proof positive that the thought of not seeing her again had never once crossed his mind, no matter how much it had been on hers. _Of course it hadn't_, she chided herself. _He knows about your future..._

He glanced at the papers on the table. "I suppose that might account for your research topic. Flattered, by the way, though I can't say as I'm impressed by your avenue of study. Archaeology? Seriously?"

She raised a brow. "Is that what you said to Professor Summerfield?" She grinned. "I hear you two had quite an interesting relationship."

"Point taken," he conceded.

She swallowed, and pulled out the chair across from him, sitting down. Why did she suddenly feel so self conscious? She had never been one for schoolgirl crushes and he was no exception. But her life had revolved around him from the start, and he knew it. That was... unnerving.

"Besides, how else do you expect me to find you?" she challenged, managing to keep her voice full of confidence. "It's not like you left a phone number or forwarding address."

"I didn't."

"You didn't what?"

"Expect you to find me."

She smiled slightly at that. "No, of course you didn't."

"Dinner?"

There was no segue, and the question caught her off guard. Actually, it wasn't even properly a question. It was a statement of intent regarding how the rest of this evening would go. He was calling the shots, as if he didn't expect her to even consider saying anything but yes. Did he know her so well or was he simply operating with the clues he had? Of course, the accounts of him spread out over the tabletop had probably given him a clue about her interest in him...

In either case, the way he was eying her, grinning like the cat who ate the canary, it was clear that he already had the evening planned. He knew she wouldn't pass up the opportunity. But there was no way in hell she was going to give in that easily. It was the principle of the thing.

"Why?" she demanded.

"Why not?"

"I don't exactly make it a habit of going out with strange men I meet in libraries."

"Strange men?" Brows raised, he made a point of looking over the papers strewn across the table.

A smile slowly crept across her face. "Yes, Doctor, strange men. And few are stranger than you."

His eyes moved back to her, and his smirk seemed to grow a bit more knowing. "Intrigued?"

"An understatement."

"So that's a yes, then. To dinner."

"Maybe."

"Maybe?" His tone held a note of challenge.

Giving a small laugh and shaking her head, she began clearing the papers and books. She'd hoped to last longer, but he was right. She was more than intrigued. She'd go as far as to say she was obsessed with this mysterious man sitting across from her.

"Alright, Doctor. That is a yes to dinner."

His smile broadened.


	3. A Night to Remember

**CHAPTER TWO**

**A Night to Remember**

"A date with the Doctor - a proper date, mind you - was a night not to be forgotten. I told you he was a traveler of both time and space, didn't I?"

The little girl nodded against her bony arm. Her smile had softened, but her interest had not faded. Even the pangs of starvation - as familiar now as they were painful - could not tear her mind away from the story the old woman was weaving.

"He knew where and when all the most amazing events occurred. Once in a lifetime events, or brilliant spectacles of nature that no one had ever witnessed before. And in his magical ship, he could arrive at just the right moment to witness the best parts. And that sort of thing can really sweep a girl off her feet, you know..."

*X*X*X*

There was no shortage of meteor showers on Earth - or New Earth, for that matter. River had seen a few. But she'd never seen one like this.

"What's causing it?"

The Doctor raised a brow as he glanced at her, as if he couldn't believe she would ask that, and she rolled her eyes before rephrasing the question.

"I know they're rocks burning up in the atmosphere but _why_? Why so many of them? And so many colors..."

The sky was littered with flashes of yellow and green and blue and purple - streaks across the blanket of stars. This planet was uninhabited but for the two of them and the Tardis behind them, its force field providing a bubble of breathable air. They were sitting on the surprisingly soft ground of a planet with no light pollution, no sound but the sounds they made, and a billion stars in the sky. It would have been an awe-inspiring sight even without the meteor shower.

"There's a planet only a few hundred thousand miles away that just blew up," he answered simply. "You're seeing all the fragments, different elements of the planet's composition interacting with the atmosphere as they burn."

She frowned slightly. "What happened to the planet? Why did it blow up?"

"A war."

His tone was a bit colder, with that, and she glanced over to see him picking at the last of the sweet and salty takeout from a planet she'd never even heard of - a point in fact that reminded her how much she still had to learn.

"The Caromau and the invading Perepetics," he continued after a moment's pause. "Only lasted about ten years, which isn't really that long when you think about it. In the end, the Caromau evacuated as many people as they could and destroyed their own planet to keep it from falling into enemy hands."

"I see," she answered softly. Two more races she had never heard of. Just how many wonders of the universe had this man explored? Was there anything he didn't know?

He glanced back up at the sky and sighed. "They'll survive as refugees for the next six hundred years or so before they've mixed so much with other races that their culture and memories simply fade away. The slow death of a civilization..."

"I've not read anything about them."

"You won't. Not on New Earth, anyway. Humans won't interact with the people of this galaxy for another hundred thousand years or so. By then, there won't be any trace of either civilization."

"Either? What happened to the Peripetics?"

"They overestimated themselves. Started a war with the Sycorax. That one didn't last very long either."

Finally, a name she knew. "The same Sycorax who invaded early 21st century Earth?"

He raised a brow as he glanced at her. "Someone's been doing their homework."

"Someone's done an awful lot of saving Earth. Sycorax, Cybermen, Autons, Zygons, Axos, Threllips."

"Threllips, really!" He laughed. "I completely forgot about that; how did you even hear about that?"

"It was in the memoirs of Captain Vengorr."

The Doctor laughed harder. "I'll bet that's a fascinating read."

"Indeed. I had the hardest time figuring out what World Cup Fever was. Did you really get him _drunk_?"

"He made it easy. I've never seen anyone drink a bottle of whiskey that fast."

"I'll bet he never did it again."

"Hell of a hangover."

She laughed.

The Doctor turned onto his back with his arms under his head and smiled up at the sky. "I don't know that I'd call that an invasion. It would've been, I'm sure. But it didn't get anywhere near that far. If you're going to count that, I'm sure there's a couple thousand you could add to that list."

"Rather the point, I think."

"Now, the Daleks..." He drew in a breath through his teeth. "History records three Dalek invasions of Earth but I can count another half dozen at least. But only three times they actually succeeded in nearly exterminating the humans from the face of the planet."

"Why do you suppose they had such interest in Earth? Too close to Skaro?"

"Not really. Same galaxy but hardly in their backyard. I don't know why they were so intent on taking that particular planet, other than the fact that they knew I wouldn't allow it." He paused. "Maybe it reminded them of Skaro before they blew it up."

"You mean _you _blew it up."

"Well, technically, Davros blew it up. But that wasn't what I meant." He glanced at her with a smile. "The war between the Kaleds and the Thals. Skaro might have looked a lot like Earth before they started launching neutron bombs at each other."

She tipped her head curiously. "I can see why archaeology is useless to you. You know the answers to all of the great questions of history."

He raised a brow. "The history of Skaro is a great question of history?"

"The Daleks in general are a great question of history. What man do you know who would visit Skaro and live to tell about it?"

"Point taken." He sat up again, folding his legs in front of him as he changed the subject abruptly. "So where are you? Sometime in your Master's degree, unless I overshot."

"Does that happen often?"

"Almost never."

"It's been six years." She paused and tilted her head as she looked over at him, studying him curiously. "How long has it been for you?"

"Since Hitler? Much longer."

"That's not much of an answer."

He smiled knowingly. "Your future's my past. No spoilers."

"What if I like spoilers?"

"Doesn't matter; you still can't have them."

"Why not?"

"Because those are the rules."

"Oh, there are rules?" she challenged playfully.

"Yes, _my_ rules. And they're not to be broken." He glanced at her, waiting for a comeback, but she let him continue, let him explain. "You can ask about me, you can ask about things I've done and places I've seen and I can even take you to some of those places if you'd like... But you can't ask me about your future. It has to be lived. You can't know how it ends."

"But you do?" she asked warily. "You know how my story ends?"

"I know how a thousand of your stories end."

"You know what I meant."

"Ask me something else." His eyes were dancing as he watched her. "Ask me something I can answer."

She paused to consider before replying. "Alright, well, perhaps you can tell me why everything I find about you is so vague. I find more in story books than I do history books."

"Safer that way," he answered simply.

"Safer for who?"

"For everyone."

She looked back at him, thoroughly intrigued and unable to deny it. "Why?" she asked, but he only smiled. She frowned as she studied him for a long moment, then finally asked, point blank, the question that was burning in her mind, "Who are you?"

"Who do you think I am?"

She smiled. She'd hoped that once she saw him again, he'd be able to explain everything. But she wasn't surprised to find that he had no intention of giving her an interview without at least making her work for it. "I think you're an impossible man."

He smiled.

"A man that few have encountered and even fewer have survived to tell about. A man who seems to have gone to great lengths to make sure no one finds him unless he wants them to do."

He watched her steadily, and nodded. "Yes."

She frowned. "You're also incredibly vague and a little infuriating."

"Infuriating? Already?" He laughed. "Go on, ask me something else, then!"

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She'd waited all her life for this moment - the chance to just _ask _him for answers to the questions she couldn't satisfy by the accounts in the legends and history books. She wasn't going to ruin it by asking the wrong questions.

"What happened to the Time Lords?"

He sighed as he looked away, muttering under his breath. "Oh, it would be that, wouldn't it?"

"Well, I can at least find information about you, albeit vague. But there's practically nothing on your people. What happened to them?"

"They died."

Stunned by the simplicity in his answer, all she could do for a moment was stare at him. But he didn't continue. Very carefully, she forged on. "All of them?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"Genocide," he answered with that same simple, detached tone. "I'm the only survivor. Well, and... you, I suppose. Though that gets complicated very quickly; how much _do_ you know about what you are, anyway?"

She shook her head and looked away, casting her eyes down. He was changing the subject. But maybe it was best to let him do. "Not much, really. No one ever really sat down and explained to me what I was."

"Tell me."

She frowned as she considered the questions that had plagued her since she was a child - questions of her own existence. "I knew my parents were human but as early as I can remember, I also knew I was different. The first time I regenerated, it didn't even surprise me. I just knew... that was what was supposed to happen. Like a race memory, I suppose."

"As early as you can remember; when was that?"

She choked on her answer, and looked away.

"A little girl in a space suit, am I right?" he asked mysteriously. She looked back up and saw him smiling softly. "You were caught in it, and you were afraid. And you forced your way out."

She was sure her eyes were a bit wider as she swallowed the lump in her throat. "How do you know that?"

"Because I was there, remember?"

She stared at him. "No," she finally whispered. "No, I didn't realize... My God, that _was _you, wasn't it?"

He stared back for a moment, then glanced away, casually.

"You were able to pilot the Tardis which means you have enough inherited memory to operate the controls when the Tardis recognized your artron energy signature. Which she no doubt _should _have done because you inherited it from her."

"From your ship? I inherited memories from your ship?"

"In a way, yes. Though it's a little more complicated than that."

She looked up at him in shock, again. He seemed to be very good at shocking her. She wondered if she'd ever get used to it. He had answers to more questions than she had even thought he could. Not only questions about who he was, but who _she _was. As if sensing her confusion, he grinned as he looked back at her.

"You're a child of the Tardis, River Song. Conceived in the Vortex by two human parents, and that made you so much more than what you should have been. Not a Time Lord, not human, but both simultaneously - one DNA chain overlaid upon the next, a mutation... You're a miracle, River. You shouldn't even be alive. No organism is meant to survive that - to be completely and totally, one hundred percent, two different species at the same time."

She stared as the words sunk in. She had known what she was - in name, at least. But to hear it described that way, to truly understand what that meant... It was almost too much to take in. Of course, she still didn't really understand. She knew virtually nothing about the Time Lords except that the Doctor was one, and apparently he had two hearts and could regenerate. Regenerate - how did she even know that word? She had never really thought about it; she'd just known it. She'd just _done _it. Without speaking, she looked back out at the sky, not sure where to go next. For one of the few times in her life, she'd been rendered speechless.

He chuckled quietly as he sat up beside her, leaning in a bit until he was talking into her ear, over her shoulder. He was too close to be casual and too far away to be intimate. Instead, he was both at once.

"Ask me something else, River Song," he teased.

She pulled away slightly and looked at him with a flash of irritation. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

"Immensely."

She couldn't help but smile at his confidence and exuberance. It derailed her thoughts, and made her shake her head as she looked away, marveling at the man next to her. He was a man she'd only ever heard legends and read stories about. A man she'd been programmed to kill, but never knew how dangerous he actually was. And she was beginning to understand why she would fall in love with him.

"You are a ridiculous, impossible man."

He beamed, as if she'd just paid him an incredible compliment. "Yes."


	4. The Question of River Song

**CHAPTER THREE**

**The Question of River Song**

"River Song was a peculiar sort of friend for another reason, as well. You see, from the time she was born, she had been horribly deceived. She had been told that she should hate the Doctor, that he was an evil man and that it was her job to protect the people he wanted to hurt.

"When she met him, of course, she discovered this wasn't the case. The Doctor was a very good man, not an evil one. But knowing this only filled River with more and more questions. She knew that she'd been lied to, but she didn't remember who had done this terrible thing and she certainly couldn't fathom why. In fact, she didn't remember much about being a little girl at all. And she thought, quite rightly, that if the Doctor knew so very much about her, perhaps he also knew about the things in her past that she couldn't remember.

"But the time-traveling Doctor was not so willing to tell her the entire story. He had lived much longer than she and had known her for many years now. He did, in fact, know a great deal more about her than she knew about herself. But much of what she asked could only be answered by information she would uncover in her future - things he couldn't tell her. Still, he was astonished to find that she knew so little about who she was and where she'd come from..."

***X*X*X***

"Do you know who programmed me to kill you?"

He glanced at her curiously as they walked down a narrow street in Queens, New York in the 34th century, taking in the relaxed atmosphere of a long weekend in summer. The street was surprisingly empty, but the balconies above were buzzing with life - layer upon layer of laughter and jabbering in a hundred familiar, Earth languages and at least a dozen from off-world.

"Interesting choice of words, 'programmed'." Glancing up and around at their surroundings, he let his voice trail off as he finished. "Almost dehumanizing..."

She shrugged. "You said yourself that I'm not exactly human."

His brow creased as he glanced back at her. "That's not what I meant."

"Well, call it what you want: programming, brainwashing, training. The fact of the matter is that someone wants you dead and they chose me as the weapon. I'd like to know who and why."

"You mean you don't?"

"No."

"Interesting..."

His thoughts wandered for a moment. There was always a chance that she was lying, but he doubted it. She wasn't quite savvy enough, this early in her time stream, to lie to him. At least, not convincingly. She knew nothing about the Silence, and perhaps that was for the best. She would know soon enough, when Madame Kavorian pulled her from the library and put her in another astronaut's suit in the bottom of Lake Silencio. But she had plenty of time before she had to worry about that.

"You're avoiding the question, Doctor."

"Am I? Sorry, what was the question?"

"Do you know who was responsible? Maybe even why?"

"No. I don't." He paused. "But there's no shortage of people in the universe who want me dead. Eleven hundred years - and that's not even real time... Bound to make some enemies."

"Eleven hundred...? You certainly look good for your age."

He smiled, preening subtly. "I know."

"So which face is this?"

He paused. "Eleventh."

"And how many do you have?"

"Thirteen." He glanced at her curiously. "You really don't know this?"

She laughed. "How could I?"

"How could you not? Three regenerations - at least; those are just the ones I count - and you thought what? That it was something everyone did when they were dying? I don't buy that for a minute."

"I told you, I knew I was different," she answered simply. "I'm well aware that regeneration is not a human process. But considering the first time I regenerated I was a child and the second time you didn't exactly stick around to explain the intricacies of it, I've had to figure things out on my own. The only way I knew they were limited was because of what my mother said in the hospital!"

"Third."

She blinked, confused. "Excuse me?"

"Three regenerations," he corrected. "Four faces."

"No."

He paused mid-step and turned to look at her, brow raised.

"Two regenerations. Three faces."

That wasn't right. He stared at her for a long moment, evaluating her honesty. But she truly believed what she was saying.

"You weren't a child when you regenerated the first time or else you wouldn't have regenerated into an adult the third time."

"Why not?"

"Because that's how it works. Your first regeneration sets the template for later times - what age and state of maturity you can take. You came back as an adult which means you regenerated, the first time, as an adult. Not a child."

He studied her carefully, waiting to see how she responded. Was he telling her something she really didn't know? Apparently, he was. She was eyeing him skeptically, as if she didn't quite believe him. "The first time I remember regenerating, I was a child in the middle of New York. Not far from here, come to think of it."

"The first time you _remember_."

"Well, it isn't exactly something you forget!" She paused, and frowned. "Do you?"

"Not without help."

"What sort of help? What do you mean?"

He looked away again. "The kind you don't remember, obviously."

"Are you saying I've regenerated more than twice?"

"Quite likely. Unless there's something else about the way your human genes changed your Time Lord ones that I don't know about."

"And how likely is that?"

"Very _not _likely, actually."

"So you're saying that I have an entire lifetime that I don't remember?"

"Probably when all of that 'programming' you mentioned took place. If I had to guess."

He watched her quietly as she unclenched her hands and slumped, deflating a bit as if this was all just too much to take at once. With a slight, sympathetic smile, he reached up and ignored her tiny flinch as he gently bushed her hair back, tucking it behind her ear. There were no words, just a quiet, comforting gesture to remind her that he (somehow) had it all under control. She smiled tightly as she looked up at him.

"Thank you."

He nodded once, calmly, and slipped his hand over hers, squeezing gently as they continued down the street at a relaxed pace. "So tell me again. Why archaeology?"

Her studies were her life at this point in her time stream. It was a topic of discussion over which she had control, and there would be no surprises, no unexpected revelations to deal with. A safe topic. And one in which he already knew the answers to the questions.

"Primarily, to try to find you. Or at least information about you."

He laughed softly, but didn't interrupt.

"I wanted to be able to find ways to locate you when I wanted to instead of just waiting for you to appear. But I also wanted to try to find out more about who I was, where I came from. Though that's been a bit of a dead end until now."

"What do you mean, a dead end?"

"I told you, the Time Lords are a legend. A fairy tale. Even more so than you are, if you can believe it. At least there are eye witness accounts of you."

"The Time Lords did their best to stay out of other peoples' history books."

"Why?"

"Little something called the Non-Interference Policy." He took a deep breath as he recited from memory. "A Time Lord stepping out into the universe freezes time wheresoever their feet touch the ground, wheresoever they draw breath from the atmosphere and at that moment, their mere presence would change time, from a fluid to a solid thing, yada, yada, yada... All very regulated. Look but don't touch, touch but don't experience, and if you make it from one side of the universe to the other without disturbing the fragile strands of the Web of Time, you can count yourself a success. Paranoia, if you ask me. The Web of Time isn't nearly as fragile as they'd have you think, back then. But at the same time I _did _know a few renegades in my day - one in particular comes to mind - whose meddling with events in history caused all sorts of trouble that never should've happened. Invasions, massacres... One of those Dalek invasions of Earth was his doing, actually. So I guess it wasn't all just for show."

She was listening with curiosity. He could see it in her eyes. Finally, he was giving her something she wanted. And, all things considered, it was one of the safer topics they could breach. Even if he wasn't entirely thrilled about discussing Gallifrey. He hesitated a moment, considering his willingness very carefully before he gave her carte blanche.

"Alright, so what else? What do you want to know about the Time Lords?"

She could sense his apprehension, and she hesitated appropriately. "Whatever you're comfortable sharing."

"None of it," he answered immediately, then looked pointedly at her as he softened his tone. "But I will. I think you -"

His heart was beating faster. Just a fraction. Blood moving faster, pulse... respiration... a microspan out of sync. His head was turned a little further to the right than he remembered it being a moment before. River's eyes were wider, though her expression quickly relaxed. And he was holding something. A black permanent marker. He swallowed as he turned his hand palm up and saw the tally. Two.

Damn it.

Two was not a lot, but it would've been more than he cared to keep company with even if it had only been one. He closed his fist around the dashes as he slipped the marker inconspicuously into his pocket.

"We should find somewhere else to talk," he declared. "Come on."

*X*X*X*

"The Doctor was right to leave quickly. For what he had seen was a hideous monster, too terrible to be recorded in the minds of living creatures. No one knows what they look like, for when you look away, you forget you've ever seen them. These were the creatures responsible for the life - the creation - of River Song. These evil creatures, identified only by a little mark on the Doctor's palm, were known as the Silence. And they were never to be far from the Doctor's mind."


End file.
